Hot Springs fork of the Collowash

BETA

Stream: About 4-5 miles of the highest quality class II-III paddling Oregon has to offer, with a forgiving 15' waterfall near the beginning, and a class IV boulder garden near the end.  Watch for a nice green surf wave where a boulder bar pushes the river against a bedrock right wall after things have eased up.
  
Flows:  2,000-7,000 cfs on the Three Lynx gauge (3k-4k seems like the goldilocks zone).  It could likely be run with plenty more water, but I just don't know how it looks up there with lots of water.

Access:  Take out at Kingfisher campground (44.977569925922566, -122.0903011923093), or where the road is near the creek around a mile upstream to skip the last class IV.

Put in where NF-70/Bagby Rd crosses over Nohorn Creek (44.953138734910425, -122.17237318319891).

Iv'e also walked up the trail towards Bagby Hot Springs to where the footbridge crosses the Hot Springs fork and put in there.  That adds a couple nice ledges, but also a couple log jams.  

Notes: The gauge is far downstream, and the Hot Springs Fork is a tributary of a tributary of the river the gauge is on.  Iv'e been up there when 2,000 cfs was a healthy flow, and also when 2,000 was too low.  A good backup option is the lower Collowash, from the Hot Springs fork confluence to the confluence with the Clackamas (June Creek section).

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Story
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 My first time doing this creek was back in High School, we were in the area camping with my family near Bagby Hot Springs.  I had my kayak and an IK in the event we might paddle the Clackamas on the way home, or maybe paddle Pegleg Falls if there was enough water.  Driving up to our campsite I noticed we were paralleling a beautiful mountain stream.  I had been to the area before to run Pegleg in an IK, but wasn't aware of what was below other than my dad had told me before that he had heard of someone running a large class V rapid just before the confluence with the Collowash.

We set up at a nice campsite along the stream, and went up to Bagby Hot Springs for the afternoon.  I noticed that the road didn't seem all that steep, so maybe the gradient was manageable?  I hadn't done much off the beaten path kayaking at this point, but I was really called to the stream.  That night we did camp stuff and the next morning my family agreed to head up to Pegleg Falls, I was going to kayak it and my step dad thought he might be interested in trying out kayaking too.

After watching me go over the falls a couple times, my step-dad decided he was interested in giving it a try in the inflatable kayak.  I explained best I could what to do, and off he went.  Nailed it.

I was impressed with how well he had done at the falls and how receptive to learning he was, so we decided we would float back down to camp.  We scrapped our original plan of having my step-brother ride in the back of the IK, which was probably for the best.

Downstream was mostly class II-III, with some cool areas and a couple III+ rapids that we scouted, including a long sliding section that was good fun..  It was a magical trip for me, heading downstream with no idea whatsoever what was around the corner, and it turning out to be gorgeous at every turn.  Other than one quick pin, it was smooth sailing start to finish.  It was quite a feeling paddling into camp that night, and I reflect on this run as one of the trips that sold me on exploratory boating.



Here is a video from a trip on Clack fest weekend.  We went up and ran the Hot Springs fork after the events.  This was a trip where a couple of us hiked up to the Bagby footbridge.
Hot Springs fork of the Collowash from Jacob Cruser on Vimeo.

Rock Creek(Lower Clackamas Tributary)

Jordan Englert, Rob Cruser (my dad), and myself ran Rock Creek near Happy Valley after a recent high water event.  Rock Creek flows into the Clackamas near the turn-off to Barton heading east on highway 212.  The take out is actually right under the highway where Hwy 212 and 224 branch off.  We set up a rope before hand to help with getting out of the gorge at the end.  Driving up to Sunnyside road, we put-in behind a neighborhood that was being constructed.  As of 2017 a park is being created further down that might be a better option for a put in.  We carried our gear down through the woods and put in on the brown creek.  From the get go we were dodging wood, but nothing sketchy.  We had a couple easy portages and one encounter with a barb wire fence!  We got to our first rapid(class 2-3), and it had wood in it so we portaged and I climbed up the wall to scout downstream .  I could see a horizon line and knew we had arrived at the falls (where the park is being built) I had seen while scouting in the summer.  We took turns running the class 3 lead in to the falls and scouted on the left.

    When I had scouted the creek in the summer there had been people working there no trespassing signs were up so I hadn't taken a thorough look at the falls.  We took a longer look this time and all had success on the left side, though its not especially deep over there.  The right side looks like the way to go but there is a rock just under the surface that can only be seen at summer flows.  I went first (far river left) and hit bottom slightly, but upright and it didn't hurt.  My dad went next and stayed off the bottom in his IK.  Jordan then went and while he hit his tail on something, it was all smiles.  More water would allow for a cleaner boof off the left and the landing would be less of an issue.   We continued downstream from here into the unknown part of the run for us.

My dad running the waterfall

   There were a couple fun class III-IV bedrock rapids in here.  In the best drop below the falls ( a small ledge drop), was a log/stick/hole combo in the landing, Jordan and I drove right to miss the wood and were successful, while my dad crashed into the stick and broke it off, cleaning up the drop significantly.  

      We continued on from here moving along quickly and portaging the occasional log jam.  The walls were vertical and remarkably committing in places considering we were between neighborhoods, but everything was portageble at river level.  There was at least one time where we portaged straight over a log jam, but most of the portages were pretty quick.  There were a couple times when it was nice to have my dad in an IK since he can just hop out of his boat onto obstacles, no eddies needed!  

There was one more ledge at the take out and a difficult eddy to grab, then we roped ourselves up the hill to our cars.  If I went back I'd continue into the Clackamas and down to Riverside County Park where there is an easier take out.

Despite the challenges (or likely because of them) I enjoyed the trip, it was a novel adventure and a fun gorge to check out.  It is only 1.5 miles long, so can be done quickly if the portages are not abundant.  

     The closest gauge is the Beaver Creek @ Troutdale Gauge.  It needs to be above 7 ft. to have enough water to check out, 8-9' is better.  Not sure how high you could go, wood and eddies would be more of a concern than the whitewater at high flows.

 The first mile can be scouted from the right bank, the last 1/2 mile from the left before hand or from the creek most of the time.  Down at river level it depends on where the wall is weakest.

After this adventure Jordan and I ran from Revenue to Dodge at 15 ft on the Bull Run gauge or so.  Big water, the usually flat first quarter mile was class IV, and the rock with wood on it visible downstream of the put-in was of concern with water pushing hard into it.  The entire run only took about 20-30 minutes with wood floating down the river the whole way and rocks heard crashing along the riverbed below us.

-Jacob

North Fork Clackamas

During this last winter break I got an e-mail from Tim Brink with a proposition to run the Oak Grove Fork of the Clackamas. It would be the toughest thing I had run, but I felt up to the challenge. But by the time the day to run it came around the river had dropped too low. The diversion from Harriet lake to the Three Lynx power station keeps this stream from running very often. His next plan was to do a first raft decent of the North Fork Clackamas. His rafting partner was to be Dave Sacquety. They had met a week or two before on Opal creek, this was to be there first time doing an entire river as a team. I was going to be along simply to video/photo there accomplishment and help with the portaging. We drove up to the put in road expecting to have to carry our boats about a half mile. When we got to the final road to the put-in Tim decided that he could make it and we made it down the old logging road that most people carry down. I would not suggest this since the road is very narrow and slopes the wrong way, along with a small berm and some stumps at the beggining that require negotiation. We arrived at the put in that was right on the creek very relieved that we did not have to start the day lugging the raft down the road.

The put in

At the put in the creek is class two, building up to class 4 and 4+ within 3/4 of a mile. There was one or two easy log portages in the class two section and one log that we went over. The rapids in this section are quite steep, but at the level we had the rafts would just wedge themselves between a couple of boulders at the top of a rapid, find the route, tell me where to enter then scoot over the logs into the current and down the rapids. The majority of the rapids in the beginning started with two entrance options, then funneled down into a 3-4 foot ledge with a hole. At the lower levels we had the rapids were technical, I found myself worried at the thought of flipping.

Typical NF Clack

Eventually we entered a gorge that began and ended with ledges of about 5 feet. After this we were on the look out for the portage of the 50' waterfall. We missed the normal take out for the portage and ended up lugging our boats 100' feet up the side of the hill and down an overgrown logging road, then down another hundred feet only for me to realize I left my paddle at the top, requiring another two-hundred vertical foot round trip for me. Overall the portage took a little over an hour of work. It was the hardest portage I have done, we felt good about getting it done in a reasonable amount of time. We then scouted Stairway to Heaven at the end of the portage, which would be my first class five rapid and the reason the rafters were here. It was a 20' sliding cascade.

Me at the bottom of "Stairway To Heaven"

Scouting the falls

The raft went first while I took video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-XvS-APw8 They went over the final drop sideways but pulled it out nicely. I went next and did fine, but I went deep in the final drop and had to roll, the first of the day for me. After this the rapids cooled off for a short period but quickly picked up again with some more fun rapids.

Dave ended up doing an R-1 decent of this rapid after the raft started to take off while they were scouting. This is a good indicator of how low the run was. In Jason Rackley's report , the rock to my left has about 2-3 feet of water going over it.

One rapid in particular stood out. This rapid is called storm drain, and I had planned on portaging it before we put on. When we got there I didn't even realize this was that rapid. The raft ran first and had there only real mishap of the day. Upon landing they got pushed left and into an aerated eddy with wood blocking the downstream end. They eventually paddled out, and I adjusted off their line by boofing to the right. We then ran a couple of cool, longer rapids. After a while came the class two runout. This wasn't very fun for me, but the raft was having a much more difficult time. It was taking about 10 min. for them to get down every rapid. It was in here that I did a 2' seal launch into a class two rapid and had my second and final roll of the day, I was lucky I didn't smack my head. After forever we made it to the lake and paddled the final 1/4 mile of flatwater. Overall it was a fun run that I will be back to, but I doubt it will ever be run again in a raft.
 

 Note:  I actually ended up rafting the creek myself years later with Hans Hoomans, whooda thought.


Video from a return trip with only kayaks.

Between 2500 and 3000 on the Clack at Three Lynx seems to be a friendly first time flow to shoot for.

Tim and Dave paddle the final bit of lake to the take-out
-Jacob